The Diamondbacks had exactly one clean chance to trade Ketel Marte, and they passed on it. Now they are living with the consequences.
Last offseason, general manager Mike Hazen listened on Marte. He wanted impact pitching back. Nothing got close. Hazen eventually told the teams he had engaged that Arizona was done considering it, and he summed it up afterward with a blunt line: “It never ended up getting that close.”
Here is why that timing mattered so much. Marte’s 10-and-5 rights, meaning ten years of major league service with five on the same club, kicked in at the start of this season. That gives him a full no-trade clause. He can veto any deal he does not like, and reporting has indicated he fully intends to use it on anything he finds undesirable.
So the answer to whether Arizona will trade Marte is effectively no, and not because the front office is in love with keeping him. The leverage is simply gone.
That would be easier to swallow if 2026 had gone well. It has not. Marte is hitting around .251 with 22 home runs, 68 RBIs and a .764 OPS, a substantial step down from his 2024 and 2025 peak. He also missed time in April and May with a strained left hamstring.
Then came August. Marte no-showed a game on August 17, leaving the team at Fenway Park without telling anyone, including manager Torey Lovullo. He later described it as a moment of frustration and said he had been dealing with a sore knee. Arizona placed him on the restricted list, then transferred him to the injured list with the left knee issue, and reinstated him on August 31 hitting fourth.
The detail that should bother Diamondbacks fans most is what Lovullo said about the pattern. This was the fourth straight season Marte has missed a game without permission. A one-off bad day is forgivable. A four-year habit is a dynamic the organization has chosen to manage rather than confront.
And you can see why they manage it. Marte at his best is one of the most productive position players in the National League and the closest thing this franchise has to a face. The contract reflects that. He signed a six-year deal worth roughly $116 million in April 2025 that runs through 2030, with an $11.5 million player option for 2031.
Here is my read. Arizona made a defensible bet and lost it. Declining to trade a star because the offers were underwhelming is ordinary front office behavior. The problem is that the same winter they chose loyalty, they also let him acquire a permanent veto over his own future, and then watched both his production and his availability slip in the same season.
The Diamondbacks sit around .500 at 74-67, which is the worst possible place to be. Not good enough to push all in, not bad enough to justify a teardown. Their best player is signed through 2030 with a no-trade clause and a documented habit of walking out when he gets frustrated.
If Arizona ever wants to move on, it now needs Marte’s permission to do it. That is a terrible negotiating position, and it is entirely self-inflicted.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
